Re:Just another Apollo? Part two (2005)
by wolverine876 on Tuesday June 14, 2022 @10:28AM
(#31740057)
> a country which hasn't been able to build anything more complex than a sports stadium in 40 years. We have no new ideas and neither does our fantasy.
What are you writing this on? If you flew out to L2, what would you see? Etc. Seriously, what forum are you in?
You mean James Webb? That's a prime example of how we've failed. It's a decent $500m telescope with a moderate but not particularly ambitious scope, that overran its budget by a factor of 20 and launched fifteen years late. That so many people think unfolding a sunshield is a pinnacle of human achievement just underlines how much ambition we have lost. We could have had an in-space constructed telescope ten times the size, if the government still actually knew how to build things.
Re:Just another Apollo? Part two (2005)
by wolverine876 on Tuesday June 14, 2022 @04:05PM
(#31745305)
> a decent $500m telescope with a moderate but not particularly ambitious scope
So says someone on the Internet. We can make whatever claims we want if we don't have to back them up. That's the point of the JWST: gather evidence to back up claims.
>That's the point of the JWST: gather evidence to back up claims.
The original cost of James Webb was meant to be $500m and it was meant to launch in 2007.
The actual cost was $9.7b and it launched in 2021 and still isn't fully operational.
We don't know how to build things any more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Cos...
Re:Just another Apollo? Part two (2005)
by wolverine876 on Wednesday June 15, 2022 @02:29PM
(#31757200)
We built it - do you mean our budgeting isn't very good? Was it better before? Were NASA programs on budget historically?
>What are you writing this on?
A glorified BBS.
>If you flew out to L2, what would you see?
Nothing much since the 1960s plans of massive space stations never materialized.
It's an extremely presentist view of the 1960/70s.
spoilers
The idea that the US of the period would have cared about putting minorities on the Moon because the USSR did it is a fantasy.
The USSR's first female cosmonaut flew in 1963, two years after Gagarin's first flight. By contrast the first US female astronaut didn't fly until 1983, 22 years after the first US manned spaceflight.
The US of the 1960s didn't go for copy cat tokenism, their response to losing the Moon race would have been to start the Mars race. It's a sad indictment of current American mentality that this blindingly obvious escalation wasn't the response of the writers of the show. It's a side effect of living in a country which hasn't been able to build anything more complex than a sports stadium in 40 years. We have no new ideas and neither does our fantasy.
end spoilers